


A Catastrophe Amongst Men

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 19th Century Medecine, Allergies, Canon Era, Cat Puns, Cats, Crack, Multi, No Beta, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Joly discovers he is allergic to cats.
Relationships: Combeferre & Joly & Bossuet Laigle, Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	A Catastrophe Amongst Men

**1828**

It is customary for Lesgle to stay with Joly and Musichetta. Whenever he is in the incapacity to pay his rent on time and is thrown out in the street with all his meagre belongings by another unsympathetic landlord, he goes to his good friend who gladly pushes stills and strange experiments that tend to produce rather unpleasant fumes out of the way to leave a little bit of place for Lesgle's law books and what little wine remains in his bottle. Joly is a kind man in this way.

Today, it appears Joly is disastrously ill. Lesgle walks in and finds Joly with a wet cloth on his forehead, an extremely runny nose, and nostrils rendered a violent shade of red from all the rubbing and nose blowing it has suffered. Musichetta throws him a pitiful look as he enters the main room and sees poor Joly in such a maladive state. Upon the dining table sits a cat that seems completely unbothered by the newcomer's arrival and general melodrama in the atmosphere, and spares the newcomer little more than a glance before returning to licking its paw.

“By Jove,” cries Lesgle, as he approaches his friend, “Joly, my friend, what has befallen you?”

“It abbears I ab ill,” answers the poor soul.

“Do you know what microbe has come over you this time?”

“Sably, no.”

Lesgle takes a seat by the other side of the bed (there is only one room in Joly's apartment, a living-dining-bed-bath-room), as Musichetta is already standing on one side, and he grabs Joly's other hand, as Musichetta is already holding one hand herself.

Musichetta dabs the forehead of her lover before removing the cloth so Joly can sit up and see his friend, but his eyes are so swollen and red the poor fellow immediately has to close them again.

“Is it perhaps a conjunvivitis?”

“Conjungdi _bid_ is. No,” answers Joly, “I 'abe buldiple sybptobs dat gould bean differend dings; firsdly, conjungdibidis. Segubbly, rhynopharyngidis, thirdly, sinusidis. Bossibly forthly a laryngidis, doo,” Joly sighes, then sneezes violently, thus projectiling spit and snot at an extraordinary distance; “I ab terribly sorry if you wanded to sday here, by friend. But all dese sybptobs are possibly forewarning a derrible, derrible flu. Busigedda has had de kindness do gobe, but id is bossibly for de best if you find elsewhere for the tibe being, unless you would wand do be condabinaded.”

“I wouldn't mind too much, if the best doctor looks after me.”

Joly keeps his larmoyant, swollen eyes open with difficulty and offers his friend a kind smile.

“I ab beig serious. Cheg Gombeferre, he will 'abe a blace for you to stay.”

“Fine,” decides Lesgle, “But I will insist on visiting every day to assure myself of your well-being.”

“Dang you.”

“Only you, poor friend, could contract a flu in the middle of Summer! It is quite formidable if you ask me.”

Lesgle stands up, kisses Musichetta's cheek, walks towards the door, strokes the back of the cat's head, thus making the animal purr in delight, asks for its name (Arnold), and then he leaves for Combeferre's rooms, narrowly escaping a most fatal fall down the stairs that would have indubitably cost him his front teeth.

The next day, after getting in a brawl with a student from the Polytech' who believed Lesgle to be flirting with his lady (he was, but all in good fun and with no harmful intentions), he heads back to Joly's room with his handkerchief pressed against his bleeding nose, and upon seeing him, Musichetta gasps and demands to be informed as to what has the man gotten up to this time. Lesgle explains, Musichetta tuts, and Joly rises from his sheets, looking not unlike Rembrandt’s _The Raising of Lazarus_ , only perhaps less ghastly.

“Are you still as ill?” he asks at the sight of his friend.

“Alas!” answers Joly, “I 'abe gondebladed de bossibilidies as do de nadure of by illness, and 'abe gob do de gonglusion dat id is nod de flu.”

“Ah, no?”

“No. I don'd 'abe a feber.”

“Ah, yes!” said Lesgle, “This is great news! So I can come to stay here? I do not mind sharing your sheets with you, really. You make for a considerably more entertaining roommate than Combeferre, as kind a fellow he is. A bit too taciturn to my taste, I must say; I had to do all the talking while he dug through what he said was the left lung of a child gone to consumption—it was all rather bleak, now that I think back on it.”

“Oh how I enby 'ib!” cries Joly, before jumping out of bed and slipping on his slippers that he always keeps by his side of the bed. He comes to gaze from a closer angle at Lesgle's nose; “Bbh. You're luggy it's nod brogen. Dsk. You oughd do be bore gareful, Bossuet.”

“Are you no longer feeling sick?”

“No, by bovebents are in no way libided by by sdrange gondizion,” he sits at the table as he says this, where Arnold is once more seated, dominating over the room, his kingdom, “O Busigedda, by dobe! Blease concoct us dat sweet potion of yours! De one dat soobes by bains!”

“The eucalyptus herbal tea, you mean?”

“Yes! Dat one! Id does be such gread goodness!”

As he says this, Joly strokes Arnold under the chin. The cat closes its eyes and leans into his host's touch, a little smile appearing on its little face.

“How did you acquire Arnold?” asks Lesgle.

“Id is de gat of one of Busigedda’s lady friends. We're keeping id while she visids family in—where was id again, my bread grumb?”

“ _Puglia_!” answers Musichetta from where she’s making the tea, with a wonderful Italian lilt.

“Ah yes, _les Pouilles_ ,” answers Joly with the sensibly more underwhelming French accent, “ Anyways, she's gobing bag in a month. Arnold's a demborary residend.”

As he finishes saying this, Joly rubs his nose with the forefinger of the hand he has used to stroke the cat and, a mere second later, he sneezes so loudly he could have woken up the entire cemetery of Montparnasse. The cat jumps out of his skin and leaps off the table to go and hide under the bed, and Joly sneezes a second time, then a third time, then a fourth, and on the fifth, the neighbour knocks on the wall and shouts “Enough!”

“ _Povero piccino_ ,” coos Musichetta as she comes to kiss Joly's head, and much like the cat had done a few seconds earlier, Joly leans into her embrace. She then kisses Lesgle on his great bald head as well and Joly smiles before blowing his nose with the vigour of a trombonist. His eyes are leaking again; “Maybe you should let a doctor auscultate you, don't you think?”

“Absoludely nod! Dey will once bore suggest dat I ab exaggerading and dat id is all in by 'ead! No, no, no! Baybe Gombeferre, bud 'e will say id is a bere cold, bud id is nod, I ab cerdain of id!”

Lesgle leaves on that night and explains the symptoms to Combeferre, who takes only vague interest into what he's saying. He is focused on writing a report on the dissections of the night prior.

“A cold, no doubt,” he concludes while writing away furiously. His scrawl is illegible.

“That's the thing,” says Lesgle, collapsing onto a stool which he mistakes for a chair, narrowly escaping cracking his skull against the hardwood floor in the process, “He says it isn't. He doesn't know what could it be.”

“Mmh,” says Combeferre. He finishes writing a few sentences then turns around and says: “Describe to me in great details how exactly he came to sneeze. And his symptoms.”

Lesgle complies. Combeferre hums some more while stroking his chin, as though he was a wise Renaissance man with an extraordinarily long beard.

“And you say he sneezed after stroking the cat?”

“Yes. Is it grievous, doctor?”

“I do not know yet, but I shall visit tomorrow after my two o'clock lecture.”

Combeferre, as a man of his word, shows up the very next day after his two o'clock lecture, and is guided by the loudness of Joly's sneezes through the neighbourhood. The booming ' _Atchaa!_ ' resonates throughout the old, narrow medieval streets like an omen of death. It is chilling.

Combeferre knocks on the right door and is let in by Musichetta. Lesgle is seated by the bed in which Joly is lying, a cat at his feet.

“I hear you are affected with quite a strange condition,” he says, and Joly, whose eyes are more swollen than ever before, to the point where keeping them open for more than two seconds is unbearable, nods his head. Combeferre smiles and approaches the bed, shoos the cat away and sits on the edge of the mattress. He checks Joly's fever, his mouth and tongue for any swelling, his eyes, his ears, his heart and respiration, and then puts all of his belongings back into his bag.

“Well?”

“This is hay fever.”

Joly springs out of his sheets; “It is imbossible!”

“And why so?”

“Begause I 'abe neber, eber manifesded 'ay feber before in by life! Dis is berhabs de only condizion that I 'abe neber been affected with! No! Gadegorically, affirmadibely impossible.”

“Well,” says Combeferre, “Then we shall continue searching.”

As soon as he gets up from the bed, the cat jumps back in his spot, and Joly strokes it again. Not a minute later he is enraptured into another frenetic sneezing fit.

“Stop touching that cursed cat!” says Musichetta, “You always sneeze right after snuggling it!”

At this statement, Combeferre could have as well thrown himself onto Arnold as he seizes him and holds it against him. Arnold spits and hisses and scratches in a desperate attempt to escape, and Combeferre only lets him go once the animal actually manages to get his neck.

“Why aren't I sneezing?”

“How would I know?” asks Lesgle.

“Mademoiselle, if you please, can you hold the cat and see if he makes you sneeze?”

Musichetta complies, picks up Arnold while trying to soothe him after the brutality of Combeferre, and when nothing happens, she passes it to Lesgle, who feels nothing, but gets scratched in the face after holding it up in an uncomfortable position. He then passes it back to Joly, who begins sneezing again.

“Well, clearly Joly has an issue with Arnold.”

“This is catastrophic!”

“Cataclysmic!”

“Categorical. I'll come back soon for more... experiments. In the meantime, wash your hands regularly, keep the cat away from the bed, avoid touching your face, and as mademoiselle has suggested, stop touching the cat.”

“Combeferre!” cries Joly, “I ab nod a guinea big for you do use at your free will! I will nod allow you to subjegd be do dordure in the nabe of science!”

Combeferre does not reply and leaves, already lost in thoughts. That night, reassured that Joly is not in fact in mortal danger, they change the bed sheets (which indeed are covered in Arnold's hair, much to Musichetta's absolute disgust), and they all three squeeze themselves into it, Joly tightly squashed in the middle, as he is the one to take up the least space. Lesgle is content to sleep with the two people who matter most to him, Arnold is not.

Three days later, Combeferre appears at Joly's front door with two cages containing cats, followed by Enjolras who is carrying another two. Musichetta refuses to let so many animals into her home, even if Combeferre tries to convince her with scientific arguments.

“I do not _care_ about the effects of dander molecules on mucous glands! Get out!”

“Actually the dander doesn't directly affect the glands-”

“Out!”

Bossuet intervenes: “I'm certain it won't be that bad! And the cats are already here anyways! We can't make our friends travel all the way back to their lodgings while escorting living beasts.”

“They will put cat hair everywhere, and then who will have to clean everything?”

“I promise I will do all of the cleaning, _bella mia_.”

This seems to be the convincing argument, for Musichetta warily lets the two students in and sits on a chair with _Le Globe,_ refusing to pay attention to anything going on around her.

Joly is seated on his bed and awaits with a concoction of dread and trepidation whatever his comrade has prepared. Combeferre opens one of the cages and the cats run out of the cage. He manages to capture one after much running and crawling around and long sequences of _pststststst_ and _minou minou._ He then presents it to Joly.

“Where did you get these cats?” asks the patient/victim, suddenly panicked, “I am not going to touch them if they have flees or have been running around the streets for days.”

“No worries,” says Combeferre, “They belong to a bourgeois.”

“And may I ask how did you acquire bourgeois cats?”

“Monsieur Chabane has a very handsome garden with very passable walls,” explains Enjolras.

So you abducted them.”

“Catdubted, even!”

“That was a terrible pun, Bossuet. But if you want to go into technicalities, Joly, no, we didn't abduct them, we borrowed them for scientific purposes. Now get to work and give Gigi a _papouille_.”

Musichetta sighs in despair from behind her newspaper.

Of course, by the fatal laws of science, Joly reacts to all cats. The humans manage to lure the animals back into the cages with their cunning manipulation abilities and then Combeferre and Enjolras leave to deliver the cats back to monsieur Chabane.

A month later, Combeferre writes a revolutionary essay on cat and dog allergies and their impact on the body, over seventy years ahead of his time. He manages to connect allergies to diseases and how the two can trigger similar resistance from the immune system, even if one is radically less mortal than the other, and Joly is banned from approaching cats again.

As for Arnold the cat, he is soon reunited with his mistress and lives the remainder of his days well-pampered and cherished, away from mad scientists and their eccentric friends.


End file.
